CHAPTER V
LINCOLN IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR
[Sidenote: 1832.]
A new period in the life of Lincoln begins with the summer of 1832. He then obtained his first public recognition, and entered upon the course of life which was to lead him to a position of prominence and great usefulness.
The business of Offutt had gone to pieces, and his clerk was out of employment, when Governor Reynolds issued his call for volunteers to move the tribe of Black Hawk across the Mississippi. For several years the raids of the old Sac chieftain upon that portion of his patrimony which he had ceded to the United States had kept the settlers in the neighborhood of Rock Island in terror, and menaced the peace of the frontier. In the spring of 1831 he came over to the east side of the river with a considerable band of warriors, having been encouraged by secret promises of cooperation from several other tribes. These failed him, however, when the time of trial arrived, and an improvised force of State volunteers, assisted by General E. P. Gaines and his detachment, had little difficulty in compelling the Indians to re- cross the Mississippi, and to enter into a solemn treaty on the 30th of June by which the former treaties were ratified and Black Hawk and his leading warriors bound themselves never again to set foot on the east side of the river, without express permission from the President or the Governor of Illinois.
[Sidenote: Reynolds, "Life and Times," p. 325.]
[Sidenote: Ford, "History of Illinois," p. 110.]
But Black Hawk was too old a savage to learn respect for treaties or resignation under fancied wrongs. He was already approaching the allotted term of life. He had been a chief of his nation for more than forty years. He had scalped his first enemy when scarcely more than a child, having painted on his blanket the blood-red hand which marked his nobility at fifteen years of age. Peace under any circumstances would doubtless have been irksome to him, but a peace which forbade him free access to his own hunting-grounds and to the graves of his fathers was more than he could now school himself to endure. He had come to believe that he had been foully wronged by the treaty which was his own act; he had even convinced himself that "land cannot be sold," a proposition in political economy which our modern socialists would be puzzled to accept or confute. Besides this, the tenderest feelings of his heart were outraged by this exclusion from his former domain. He had never passed a year since the death of his daughter without making a pilgrimage to her grave at Oquawka and spending hours in mystic ceremonies and contemplation. He was himself prophet as well as warrior, and had doubtless his share of mania, which is the strength of prophets. The promptings of his own broken heart readily seemed to him the whisperings of attendant spirits; and day by day these unseen incitements increased around him, until they could not be resisted even if death stood in the way.
He made his combinations during the winter, and had it not been for the loyal attitude of Keokuk, he could have brought the entire nation of the Sacs and Foxes to the war-path. As it was, the flower of the young men came with him when, with the opening spring, he crossed the river once more. He came this time, he said, "to plant corn," but as a preliminary to this peaceful occupation of the land he marched up the Rock River, expecting to be joined by the Winnebagoes and Pottawatomies. But the time was passed for honorable alliances among the Indians. His oath-bound confederates gave him little assistance, and soon cast in their lot with the stronger party.
This movement excited general alarm in the State. General Henry Atkinson, commanding the United States troops, sent a formal summons to Black Hawk to return; but the old chief was already well on his way to the lodge of his friend, the prophet Wabokishick, at Prophetstown, and treated the summons with contemptuous defiance. The Governor immediately called for volunteers, and was himself astonished at the alacrity with which the call was answered. Among those who enlisted at the first tap of the drum was Abraham Lincoln, and equally to his surprise and delight he was elected captain of his company. The volunteer organizations of those days were conducted on purely democratic principles. The company assembled on the green, an election was suggested, and three-fourths of the men walked over to where Lincoln was standing; most of the small remainder joined themselves to one Kirkpatrick, a man of some substance and standing from Spring Creek. We have the word of Mr. Lincoln for it, that no subsequent success ever gave him such unmixed pleasure as this earliest distinction. It was a sincere, unsought tribute of his equals to those physical and moral qualities which made him the best man of his hundred, and as such was accepted and prized.
[Sidenote: Reynolds, "Life and Times," p. 363.]
At the Beardstown rendezvous, Captain Lincoln's company was attached to Colonel Samuel Thompson's regiment, the Fourth Illinois, which was organized at Richland, Sangamon County, on the 21st of April, and moved on the 27th, with the rest of the command under General Samuel Whitesides, for Yellow Banks, where the boats with provisions had been ordered to meet them. It was arduous marching. There were no roads and no bridges, and the day's task included a great deal of labor. The third day out they came to the Henderson River, a stream some fifty yards wide, swift and swollen with the spring thaws, with high and steep banks. To most armies this would have seemed a serious obstacle, but these backwoodsmen swarmed to the work like beavers, and in less than three hours the river was crossed with the loss of only one or two horses and wagons. When they came to Yellow Banks, on the Mississippi, the provision-boats had not arrived, and for three days they waited there literally without food; very uncomfortable days for Governor Reynolds, who accompanied the expedition, and was forced to hear the outspoken comments of two thousand hungry men on his supposed inefficiency. But on the 6th of May the William Wallace arrived, and "this sight," says the Governor with characteristic sincerity, "was, I presume, the most interesting I ever beheld." From there they marched to the mouth of Rock River, and thence General Whitesides proceeded with his volunteers up the river some ninety miles to Dixon, where they halted to await the arrival of General Atkinson with the regular troops and provisions. There they found two battalions of fresh horsemen under Majors Stillman and Bailey, who had as yet seen no service and were eager for the fray. Whitesides's men were tired with their forced march, and besides, in their ardor to get forward, they had thrown away a good part of their provisions and left their baggage behind. It pleased the Governor, therefore, to listen to the prayers of Stillman's braves, and he gave them orders to proceed to the head of Old Man's Creek, where it was supposed there were some hostile Indians, and coerce them into submission. "I thought," says the Governor in his memoirs, "they might discover the enemy."
[Illustration: A SOLDIER'S DISCHARGE FROM THE BLACK HAWK WAR, SIGNED
BY A. LINCOLN, CAPTAIN. IN THE POSSESSION OF O. H. OLDROTD,
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.]
The supposition was certainly well founded. They rode merrily away, came to Old Man's Creek, thereafter to be called Stillman's Run, and encamped for the night. By the failing light a small party of Indians was discovered on the summit of a hill a mile away, and a few courageous gentlemen hurriedly saddled their horses, and, without orders, rode after them. The Indians retreated, but were soon overtaken, and two or three of them killed. The volunteers were now strung along a half mile of hill and valley, with no more order or care than if they had been chasing rabbits. Black Hawk, who had been at supper when the running fight began, hastily gathered a handful of warriors and attacked the scattered whites. The onset of the savages acted like an icy bath on the red-hot valor of the volunteers; they turned and ran for their lives, stampeding the camp as they fled. There was very little resistance—so little that Black Hawk, fearing a ruse, tried to recall his warriors from the pursuit, but in the darkness and confusion could not enforce his orders. The Indians killed all they caught up with; but the volunteers had the fleeter horses, and only eleven were overtaken. The rest reached Dixon by twos and threes, rested all night, and took courage. General Whitesides marched out to the scene of the disaster the next morning, but the Indians were gone. They had broken up into small parties, and for several days they reaped the bloody fruit of their victory in the massacre of peaceful settlements in the adjacent districts.
The time of enlistment of the volunteers had now come to an end, and the men, seeing no prospect of glory or profit, and weary of the work and the hunger which were the only certain incidents of the campaign, refused in great part to continue in service. But it is hardly necessary to say that Captain Lincoln was not one of these homesick soldiers. Not even the trammels of rank, which are usually so strong among the trailers of the saber, could restrain him from what he considered his simple duty. As soon as he was mustered out of his captaincy, he re-enlisted on the same day, May 27, as a private soldier. Several other officers did the same, among them General Whitesides and Major John T. Stuart. Lincoln became a member of Captain Elijah Iles's company of mounted volunteers, sometimes called the "Independent Spy Battalion," an organization unique of its kind, if we may judge from the account given by one of its troopers. It was not, says Mr. George M. Harrison, "under the control of any regiment or brigade, but received orders directly from the Commander-in-Chief, and always, when with the army, camped within the lines, and had many other privileges, such as having no camp duties to perform and drawing rations as much and as often as we pleased," which would seem to liken this battalion as nearly as possible to the fabled "regiment of brigadiers." With this elite corps Lincoln served through his second enlistment, though it was not his fortune to take part in either of the two engagements in which General James D. Henry, at the Wisconsin Bluffs and the Bad Axe, broke and destroyed forever the power of Black Hawk and the British band of Sacs and Foxes.
After Lincoln was relieved of the weight of dignity involved in his captaincy, the war became a sort of holiday, and the tall private from New Salem enjoyed it as much as any one. He entered with great zest into the athletic sports with which soldiers love to beguile the tedium of camp. He was admitted to be the strongest man in the army, and, with one exception, the best wrestler. Indeed, his friends never admitted the exception, and severely blamed Lincoln for confessing himself defeated on the occasion when he met the redoubtable Thompson, and the two fell together on the turf. His popularity increased from the beginning to the end of the campaign, and those of his comrades who still survive always speak with hearty and affectionate praise of his character and conduct in those rough yet pleasantly remembered days.
[Sidenote: MS. Letters from Thomas, Gregg and others.]
The Spy Battalion formed no part of General Henry's forces when, by a disobedience of orders as prudent as it was audacious, he started with his slender force on the fresh trail which he was sure would lead him to Black Hawk's camp. He found and struck the enemy at bay on the bluffs of the Wisconsin River on the 21st of July, and inflicted upon them a signal defeat. The broken remnant of Black Hawk's power then fled for the Mississippi River, the whole army following in close pursuit—General Atkinson in front and General Henry bringing up the rear. Fortune favored the latter once more, for while Black Hawk with a handful of men was engaging and drawing away the force under Atkinson, General Henry struck the main trail, and brought on the battle of the Bad Axe, if that could be called a battle which was an easy slaughter of the weary and discouraged savages, fighting without heart or hope, an army in front and the great river behind. Black Hawk escaped the fate of his followers, to be captured a few days later through the treachery of his allies. He was carried in triumph to Washington and presented to President Jackson, to whom he made this stern and defiant speech, showing how little age or disaster could do to tame his indomitable spirit: "I am a man and you are another. I did not expect to conquer the white people. I took up the hatchet to avenge injuries which could no longer be borne. [Footnote: It is a noteworthy coincidence that President Lincoln's proclamation at the opening of the war calls for troops "to redress wrongs already long enough endured."] Had I borne them longer my people would have said: 'Black Hawk is a squaw; he is too old to be a chief; he is no Sac.' This caused me to raise the war-whoop. I say no more of it; all is known to you." He returned to Iowa, and died on the 3d of October, 1838, at his camp on the river Des Moines. He was buried in gala dress, with cocked hat and sword, and the medals presented him by two governments. He was not allowed to rest even in his grave. His bones were exhumed by some greedy wretch and sold from hand to hand till they came at last to the Burlington Museum, where they were destroyed by fire.
[Illustration: BLACK HAWK]
It was on the 16th of June, a month before the slaughter of the Bad Axe, that the battalion to which Lincoln belonged was at last mustered out, at Whitewater, Wisconsin. His final release from the service was signed by a young lieutenant of artillery, Robert Anderson, who, twenty-nine years later, in one of the most awful crises in our annals, was to sustain to Lincoln relations of prodigious importance, on a scene illuminated by the flash of the opening guns of the civil war. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] The men started home the next day in high spirits, school-boys for their holidays. Lincoln had need, like Horatio, of his good spirits, for they were his only outfit for the long journey to New Salem, he and his mess-mate Harrison [Footnote: George M. Harrison, who gives an account of his personal experiences in Lamon, p. 116.] having had their horses stolen the day before by some patriot over-anxious to reach home. But, as Harrison says, "I laughed at our fate, and he joked at it, and we all started off merrily. The generous men of our company walked and rode by turns with us, and we fared about equal with the rest. But for this generosity our legs would have had to do the better work; for in that day this dreary route furnished no horses to buy or to steal; and, whether on horse or afoot, we always had company, for many of the horses' backs were too sore for riding." It is not hard to imagine with what quips and quirks of native fancy Lincoln and his friends beguiled the way through forest and prairie. With youth, good health, and a clear conscience, and even then the dawn of a young and undefiled ambition in his heart, nothing was wanting to give zest and spice to this long, sociable walk of a hundred leagues. One joke is preserved, and this one is at the expense of Lincoln. One chilly morning he complained of being cold. "No wonder," said some facetious cavalier, "there is so much of you on the ground." [Footnote: Dr. Holland gives this homely joke (Life of Lincoln, p. 71), but transfers it to a time four years later, when Lincoln had permanently assumed shoes and had a horse of his own.] We hope Lincoln's contributions to the fun were better than this, but of course the prosperity of these jests lay rather in the liberal ears that heard them than in the good-natured tongues that uttered them.
Lincoln and Harrison could not have been altogether penniless, for at Peoria they bought a canoe and paddled down to Pekin. Here the ingenious Lincoln employed his hereditary talent for carpentry by making an oar for the frail vessel while Harrison was providing the commissary stores. The latter goes on to say: "The river, being very low, was without current, so that we had to pull hard to make half the speed of legs on land; in fact, we let her float all night, and on the next morning always found the objects still visible that were beside us the previous evening. The water was remarkably clear for this river of plants, and the fish appeared to be sporting with us as we moved over or near them. On the next day after we left Pekin we overhauled a raft of saw-logs, with two men afloat on it to urge it on with poles and to guide it in the channel. We immediately pulled up to them and went on the raft, where we were made welcome by various demonstrations, especially by an invitation to a feast on fish, corn- bread, eggs, butter, and coffee, just prepared for our benefit. Of these good things we ate almost immoderately, for it was the only warm meal we had made for several days. While preparing it, and after dinner, Lincoln entertained them, and they entertained us for a couple of hours very amusingly." Kindly human companionship was a luxury in that green wilderness, and was readily appreciated and paid for.
The returning warriors dropped down the river to the village of Havana—from Pekin to Havana in a canoe! The country is full of these geographical nightmares, the necessary result of freedom of nomenclature bestowed by circumstances upon minds equally destitute of taste or education. There they sold their boat,—no difficult task, for a canoe was a staple article in any river-town,—and again set out "the old way, over the sand-ridges, for Petersburg. As we drew near home, the impulse became stronger and urged us on amazingly. The long strides of Lincoln, often slipping back in the loose sand six inches every step, were just right for me; and he was greatly diverted when he noticed me behind him stepping along in his tracks to keep from slipping." Thus the two comrades came back from their soldierings to their humble homes, from which Lincoln was soon to start on the way marked out for him by Providence, with strides which no comrade, with whatever goodwill, might hope to follow.
He never took his campaigning seriously. The politician's habit of glorifying the petty incidents of a candidate's life always seemed absurd to him, and in his speech, made in 1848, ridiculing the effort on the part of General Cass's friends to draw some political advantage from that gentleman's respectable but obscure services on the frontier in the war with Great Britain, he stopped any future eulogist from painting his own military achievements in too lively colors. "Did you know, Mr. Speaker," he said, "I am a military hero! In the days of the Black Hawk war I fought, bled, and came away. I was not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about as near it as General Cass was to Hull's surrender; and, like him, I saw the place very soon afterwards. It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break, but I bent my musket pretty badly on one occasion. If General Cass went in advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charges on the wild onions. If he saw any live fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes; and although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. If ever I should conclude to doff whatever our Democratic friends may suppose there is of black-cockade Federalism about me, and thereupon they shall take me up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest that they shall not make fun of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me into a military hero."
[Relocated Footnote: A story to the effect that Lincoln was mustered into service by Jefferson Davis has for a long time been current, but the strictest search in the records fails to confirm it. We are indebted to General R. C. Drum, Adjutant-General of the Army, for an interesting letter giving all the known facts in relation to this story. General Drum says: "The company of the Fourth Regiment Illinois Mounted Volunteers, commanded by Mr. Lincoln, was, with others, called out by Governor Reynolds, and was organized at Richland, Sangamon County, Illinois, April 21, 1832. The muster-in roll is not on file, but the records show that the company was mustered out at the mouth of Fox River, May 27, 1832, by Nathaniel Buckmaster, Brigade-Major to General Samuel Whitesides's Illinois Volunteers. On the muster-roll of Captain Elijah Iles's company, Illinois Mounted Volunteers, A. Lincoln (Sangamon County) appears as a private from May 27, 1832, to June 16, 1832, when the company was mustered out of service by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, Third United States Artillery and Colonel (Assistant Inspector-General) Illinois Volunteers. Brigadier-General Henry Atkinson, in his report of May 30, 1832, stated that the Illinois Volunteers were called out by the Governor of that State, but in haste and for no definite period of service. On their arrival at Ottawa they became clamorous for their discharge, which the Governor granted, retaining—of those who were discharged and volunteered for a further period of twenty days—a sufficient number of men to form six companies, which General Atkinson found at Ottawa on his arrival there from Rock River. General Atkinson further reports that these companies and some three hundred regular troops, remaining in position at Rock River, were all the force left him to keep the enemy in check until the assemblage of the three thousand additional Illinois militia called out by the Governor upon his (General A.'s) requisition, to rendezvous at Ottawa, June 12-15, 1832,
"There can be no doubt that Captain Iles's company, mentioned above, was one of the six which served until June 16, 1832, while the fact is fully established that the company of which Mr. Lincoln was a member was mustered out by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who, in April, 1861, was in command of Fort Sumter. There is no evidence to show that it was mustered in by Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Mr. Davis's company (B, First United States Infantry) was stationed at Fort Crawford, Wisconsin, during the months of January and February, 1832, and he is borne on the rolls as 'absent on detached service at the Dubuque mines by order of Colonel Morgan.' From March 26 to August 18, 1832, the muster-rolls of his company report him as absent on furlough."]
CHAPTER VI
SURVEYOR AND REPRESENTATIVE
[Sidenote: 1832.]
The discharged volunteer arrived in New Salem only ten days before the August election, in which he had a deep personal interest. Before starting for the wars he had announced himself, according to the custom of the time, by a handbill circular, as a candidate for the Legislature from Sangamon County. [Footnote: We are aware that all former biographers have stated that Lincoln's candidacy for the Legislature was subsequent to his return from the war, and a consequence of his service. But his circular is dated March 9, 1832, and the "Sangamo Journal" mentions his name among the July, and apologizes candidates in for having accidentally omitted it in May.] He had done this in accordance with his own natural bent for public life and desire for usefulness and distinction, and not without strong encouragement from friends whose opinion he valued. He had even then considerable experience in speaking and thinking on his feet. He had begun his practice in that direction before leaving Indiana, and continued it everywhere he had gone. Mr. William Butler tells us that on one occasion, when Lincoln was a farmhand at Island Grove, the famous circuit-rider, Peter Cartwright, came by, electioneering for the Legislature, and Lincoln at once engaged in a discussion with him in the cornfield, in which the great Methodist was equally astonished at the close reasoning and the uncouth figure of Mr. Brown's extraordinary hired man. At another time, after one Posey, a politician in search of office, had made a speech in Macon, John Hanks, whose admiration of his cousin's oratory was unbounded, said that "Abe could beat it." He turned a keg on end, and the tall boy mounted it and made his speech. "The subject was the navigation of the Sangamon, and Abe beat him to death," says the loyal Hanks. So it was not with the tremor of a complete novice that the young man took the stump during the few days left him between his return and the election.
[Sidenote: Reynolds, "My Own Times," p. 291.]
He ran as a Whig. As this has been denied on authority which is generally trustworthy, it is well enough to insist upon the fact. We have a memorandum in Mr. Lincoln's own handwriting in which he says he ran as "an avowed Clay man." In one of the few speeches of his, which, made at this time, have been remembered and reported, he said: "I am in favor of a national bank; I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and of a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles." Nothing could be more unqualified or outspoken than this announcement of his adhesion to what was then and for years afterwards called "the American System" of Henry Clay. Other testimony is not wanting to the same effect. Both Major Stuart and Judge Logan [Footnote: The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard for him. That was the general understanding of the matter here at the time. In this he made no concession of principle whatever. He was as stiff as a man could be in his Whig doctrines. They did this for him simply because he was popular—because he was Lincoln. STEPHEN T. LOGAN. July 6, 1875.] say that Lincoln ran in 1832 as a Whig, and that his speeches were unevasively in defense of the principles of that party. Without discussing the merits of the party or its purposes, we may insist that his adopting them thus openly at the outset of his career was an extremely characteristic act, and marks thus early the scrupulous conscientiousness which shaped every action of his life. The State of Illinois was by a large majority Democratic, hopelessly attached to the person and policy of Jackson. Nowhere had that despotic leader more violent and unscrupulous partisans than there. They were proud of their very servility, and preferred the name of "whole-hog Jackson men" to that of Democrats. The Whigs embraced in their scanty ranks the leading men of the State, those who have since been most distinguished in its history, such as S. T. Logan, Stuart, Browning, Dubois, Hardin, Breese, and many others. But they were utterly unable to do anything except by dividing the Jackson men, whose very numbers made their party unwieldy, and by throwing their votes with the more decent and conservative portion of them. In this way, in the late election, they had secured the success of Governor Reynolds—the Old Ranger—against Governor Kinney, who represented the vehement and proscriptive spirit which Jackson had just breathed into the party. He had visited the General in Washington, and had come back giving out threatenings and slaughter against the Whigs in the true Tennessee style, declaring that "all Whigs should be whipped out of office like dogs out of a meat-house"; the force of south-western simile could no further go. But the great popularity of Reynolds and the adroit management of the Whigs carried him through successfully. A single fact will show on which side the people who could read were enlisted. The "whole-hog" party had one newspaper, the opposition five. Of course it would have been impossible for Reynolds to poll a respectable vote if his loyalty to Jackson had been seriously doubted. As it was, he lost many votes through a report that he had been guilty of saying that "he was as strong for Jackson as any reasonable man should be." The Governor himself, in his naive account of the canvass, acknowledges the damaging nature of this accusation, and comforts himself with quoting an indiscretion of Kinney's, who opposed a projected canal on the ground that "it would flood the country with Yankees."
It showed some moral courage, and certainly an absence of the shuffling politician's fair-weather policy, that Lincoln, in his obscure and penniless youth, at the very beginning of his career, when he was not embarrassed by antecedents or family connections, and when, in fact, what little social influence he knew would have led him the other way, chose to oppose a furiously intolerant majority, and to take his stand with the party which was doomed to long-continued defeat in Illinois. The motives which led him to take this decisive course are not difficult to imagine. The better sort of people in Sangamon County were Whigs, though the majority were Democrats, and he preferred through life the better sort to the majority. The papers he read were the Louisville "Journal" and the "Sangamo Journal," both Whig. Reading the speeches and debates of the day, he sided with Webster against Calhoun, and with Clay against anybody. Though his notions of politics, like those of any ill-educated young man of twenty-two, must have been rather crude, and not at all sufficient to live and to die by, he had adopted them honestly and sincerely, with no selfish regard to his own interests; and though he ardently desired success, he never abated one jot or tittle of his convictions for any possible personal gain, then or thereafter.
In the circular in which he announced his candidacy he made no reference to national politics, but confined himself mainly to a discussion of the practicability of improving the navigation of the Sangamon, the favorite hobby of the place and time. He had no monopoly of this "issue." It formed the burden of nearly every candidate's appeal to the people in that year. The excitement occasioned by the trip of the Talisman had not yet died away, although the little steamer was now dust and ashes, and her bold commander had left the State to avoid an awkward meeting with the sheriff. The hope of seeing Springfield an emporium of commerce was still lively among the citizens of Sangamon County, and in no one of the handbills of the political aspirants of the season was that hope more judiciously encouraged than in the one signed by Abraham Lincoln. It was a well- written circular, remarkable for its soberness and, reserve when we consider the age and the limited advantages of the writer. It concluded in these words: "Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous I shall be ready to renounce them…. Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or powerful relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
This is almost precisely the style of his later years. The errors of grammar and construction which spring invariably from an effort to avoid redundancy of expression remained with him through life. He seemed to grudge the space required for necessary parts of speech. But his language was at twenty-two, as it was thirty years later, the simple and manly attire of his thought, with little attempt at ornament and none at disguise. There was an intermediate time when he sinned in the direction of fine writing; but this ebullition soon passed away, and left that marvelously strong and transparent style in which his two inaugurals were written.
Of course, in the ten days left him after his return from the field, a canvass of the county, which was then—before its division—several thousand square miles in extent, was out of the question. He made a few speeches in the neighborhood of New Salem, and at least one in Springfield. He was wholly unknown there except by his few comrades in arms. We find him mentioned in the county paper only once during the summer, in an editorial note adding the name of Captain Lincoln to those candidates for the Legislature who were periling their lives on the frontier and had left their reputations in charge of their generous fellow-citizens at home. On the occasion of his speaking at Springfield, most of the candidates had come together to address a meeting there to give their electors some idea of their quality. These were severe ordeals for the rash aspirants for popular favor. Besides those citizens who came to listen and judge, there were many whose only object was the free whisky provided for the occasion, and who, after potations pottle-deep, became not only highly unparliamentary but even dangerous to life and limb. This wild chivalry of Lick Creek was, however, less redoubtable to Lincoln than it might be to an urban statesman unacquainted with the frolic brutality of Clary's Grove. Their gambols never caused him to lose his self-possession. It is related that once, while he was speaking, he saw a ruffian attack a friend of his in the crowd, and the rencontre not resulting according to the orator's sympathies, he descended from the stand, seized the objectionable fighting man by the neck, "threw him some ten feet," then calmly mounted to his place and finished his speech, the course of his logic undisturbed by this athletic parenthesis. Judge Logan saw Lincoln for the first time on the day when he came up to Springfield on his canvass this summer. He thus speaks of his future partner: "He was a very tall, gawky, and rough-looking fellow then; his pantaloons didn't meet his shoes by six inches. But after he began speaking I became very much interested in him. He made a very sensible speech. His manner was very much the same as in after life; that is, the same peculiar characteristics were apparent then, though of course in after years he evinced more knowledge and experience. But he had then the same novelty and the same peculiarity in presenting his ideas. He had the same individuality that he kept through all his life."
There were two or three men at the meeting whose good opinion was worth more than all the votes of Lick Creek to one beginning life: Stephen T. Logan, a young lawyer who had recently come from Kentucky with the best equipment for a nisi prius practitioner ever brought into the State; Major Stuart, whom we have met in the Black Hawk war, once commanding a battalion and then marching as a private; and William Butler, afterwards prominent in State politics, at that time a young man of the purest Western breed in body and character, clear-headed and courageous, and ready for any emergency where a friend was to be defended or an enemy punished. We do not know whether Lincoln gained any votes that day, but he gained what was far more valuable, the active friendship of these able and honorable men, all Whigs and all Kentuckians like himself.
The acquaintances he made in his canvass, the practice he gained in speaking, and the added confidence which this experience of measuring his abilities with those of others gave, were all the advantages which Lincoln derived from this attempt. He was defeated, for the only time in his life, in a contest before the people. The fortunate candidates were E. D. Taylor, J. T. Stuart, Achilles Morris, and Peter Cartwright, the first of whom received 1127 votes and the last 815. Lincoln's position among the eight defeated candidates was a very respectable one. He had 657 votes, and there were five who fared worse, among them his old adversary Kirkpatrick. What must have been especially gratifying to him was the fact that he received the almost unanimous vote of his own neighborhood, the precinct of New Salem, 277 votes against 3, a result which showed more strongly than any words could do the extent of the attachment and the confidence which his genial and upright character had inspired among those who knew him best.
Having been, even in so slight a degree, a soldier and a politician, he was unfitted for a day laborer; but being entirely without means of subsistence, he was forced to look about for some suitable occupation. We know he thought seriously at this time of learning the trade of a blacksmith, and using in that honest way the sinew and brawn which nature had given him. But an opening for another kind of business occurred, which prevented his entering upon any merely mechanical occupation. Two of his most intimate friends were the brothers Herndon, called, according to the fashion of the time, which held it unfriendly to give a man his proper name, and arrogant for him to claim it, "Row" and "Jim." They kept one of those grocery stores in which everything salable on the frontier was sold, and which seem to have changed their occupants as rapidly as sentry-boxes. "Jim" sold his share to an idle and dissolute man named Berry, and "Row" soon transferred his interest to Lincoln. It was easy enough to buy, as nothing was ever given in payment but a promissory note. A short time afterwards, one Reuben Radford, who kept another shop of the same kind, happened one evening to attract the dangerous attention of the Clary's Grove boys, who, with their usual prompt and practical facetiousness, without a touch of malice in it, broke his windows and wrecked his store. The next morning, while Radford was ruefully contemplating the ruin, and doubtless concluding that he had had enough of a country where the local idea of neighborly humor found such eccentric expression, he hailed a passer-by named Greene, and challenged him to buy his establishment for four hundred dollars. This sort of trade was always irresistible to these Western speculators, and Greene at once gave his note for the amount. It next occurred to him to try to find out what the property was worth, and doubting his own skill, he engaged Lincoln to make an invoice of it. The young merchant, whose appetite for speculation had just been whetted by his own investment, undertook the task, and, finding the stock of goods rather tempting, offered Greene $250 for his bargain, which was at once accepted. Not a cent of money changed hands in all these transactions. By virtue of half a dozen signatures, Berry and Lincoln became proprietors of the only mercantile establishment in the village, and the apparent wealth of the community was increased by a liberal distribution of their notes among the Herndons, Radford, Greene, and a Mr. Rutledge, whose business they had also bought.
Fortunately for Lincoln and for the world, the enterprise was not successful. It was entered into without sufficient reflection, and from the very nature of things was destined to fail. To Berry the business was merely the refuge of idleness. He spent his time in gossip and drank up his share of the profits, and it is probable that Lincoln was far more interested in politics and general reading than in the petty traffic of his shop. In the spring of the next year, finding that their merchandise was gaining them little or nothing, they concluded to keep a tavern in addition to their other business, and the records of the County Court of Sangamon County show that Berry took out a license for that purpose on the 6th of March, 1833. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (1) relocated to chapter end.] But it was even then too late for any expedients to save the moribund partnership. The tavern was never opened, for about this time Lincoln and Berry were challenged to sell out to a pair of vagrant brothers named Trent, who, as they had no idea of paying, were willing to give their notes to any amount. They soon ran away, and Berry expired, extinguished in rum. Lincoln was thus left loaded with debts, and with no assets except worthless notes of Berry and the Trents. It is greatly to his credit that he never thought of doing by others as others had done by him. The morality of the frontier was deplorably loose in such matters, and most of these people would have concluded that the failure of the business expunged its liabilities. But Lincoln made no effort even to compromise the claims against him. He promised to pay when he could, and it took the labor of years to do it; but he paid at last every farthing of the debt, which seemed to him and his friends so large that it was called among them "the national debt."
[Illustration: JUDGE STEPHEN T. LOGAN.]
He had already begun to read elementary books of law, borrowed from Major Stuart and other kindly acquaintances. Indeed, it is quite possible that Berry and Lincoln might have succeeded better in business if the junior member of the firm had not spent so much of his time reading Blackstone and Chitty in the shade of a great oak just outside the door, while the senior quietly fuddled himself within. Eye-witnesses still speak of the grotesque youth, habited in homespun tow, lying on his back with his feet on the trunk of the tree, and poring over his book by the hour, "grinding around with the shade," as it shifted from north to east. After his store, to use his own expression, had "winked out," he applied himself with more continuous energy to his reading, doing merely what odd jobs came to his hand to pay his current expenses, which were of course very slight. He sometimes helped his friend Ellis in his store; sometimes went into the field and renewed his exploits as a farm-hand, which had gained him a traditional fame in Indiana; sometimes employed his clerkly hand in straightening up a neglected ledger. It is probable that he worked for his board oftener than for any other compensation, and his hearty friendliness and vivacity, as well as his industry in the field, made him a welcome guest in any farmhouse in the county. His strong arm was always at the disposal of the poor and needy; it is said of him, with a graphic variation of a well-known text, "that he visited the fatherless and the widow and chopped their wood."
In the spring of this year, 1833, he was appointed Postmaster of New Salem, and held the office for three years. Its emoluments were slender and its duties light, but there was in all probability no citizen of the village who could have made so much of it as he. The mails were so scanty that he was said to carry them in his hat, and he is also reported to have read every newspaper that arrived; it is altogether likely that this formed the leading inducement to his taking the office. His incumbency lasted until New Salem ceased to be populous enough for a post-station and the mail went by to Petersburg. Dr. J. G. Holland relates a sequel to this official experience which illustrates the quaint honesty of the man. Several years later, when he was a practicing lawyer, an agent of the Post-office Department called upon him, and asked for a balance due from the New Salem office, some seventeen dollars. Lincoln rose, and opening a little trunk which lay in a corner of the room, took from it a cotton rag in which was tied up the exact sum required. "I never use any man's money but my own," he quietly remarked. When we consider the pinching poverty in which these years had been passed, we may appreciate the self-denial denial which had kept him from making even a temporary use of this little sum of government money.
[Illustration: A. LINCOLN'S SURVEYING INSTRUMENTS AND SADDLE-BAG. IN
THE POSSESSION OF THE LINCOLN MONUMENT COLLECTION.]
John Calhoun, the Surveyor of Sangamon County, was at this time overburdened with work. The principal local industry was speculation in land. Every settler of course wanted his farm surveyed and marked out for him, and every community had its syndicate of leading citizens who cherished a scheme of laying out a city somewhere. In many cases the city was plotted, the sites of the principal buildings, including a courthouse and a university, were determined, and a sonorous name was selected out of Plutarch, before its location was even considered. For this latter office the intervention of an official surveyor was necessary, and therefore Mr. Calhoun had more business than he could attend to without assistance. Looking about for a young man of good character, intelligent enough to learn surveying at short notice, his attention was soon attracted to Lincoln. He offered young Abraham a book containing the elements of the art, and told him when he had mastered it he should have employment. The offer was a flattering one, and Lincoln, with that steady self-reliance of his, accepted it, and armed with his book went out to the schoolmaster's (Menton Graham's), and in six weeks' close application made himself a surveyor. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.]
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH PLAN OF ROAD SURVEYED BY A. LINCOLN AND OTHERS. The lower half is the right-hand side of the plan which, in the original, is in one piece.]
[Illustration: Fac-simile of Lincoln's Report of the road survey.]
It will be remembered that Washington in his youth adopted the same profession, but there were few points of similarity in the lives of the two great Presidents, in youth or later manhood. The Virginian had every social advantage in his favor, and was by nature a man of more thrift and greater sagacity in money matters. He used the knowledge gained in the practice of his profession so wisely that he became rather early in life a large land-holder, and continually increased his possessions until his death. Lincoln, with almost unbounded opportunities for the selection and purchase of valuable tracts, made no use whatever of them. He employed his skill and knowledge merely as a bread-winner, and made so little provision for the future that when Mr. Van Bergen, who had purchased the Radford note, sued and got judgment on it, his horse and his surveying instruments were taken to pay the debt, and only by the generous intervention of a friend was he able to redeem these invaluable means of living. He was, nevertheless, an excellent surveyor. His portion of the public work executed under the directions of Mr. Calhoun and his successor, T. M. Neale, was well performed, and he soon found his time pretty well employed with private business which came to him from Sangamon and the adjoining counties. Early in the year 1834 we find him appointed one of three "viewers" to locate a road from Salt Creek to the county line in the direction of Jacksonville. The board seems to have consisted mainly of its chairman, as Lincoln made the deposit of money required by law, surveyed the route, plotted the road, and wrote the report. [Transcriber's Note: (3) Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
Though it is evident that the post-office and the surveyor's compass were not making a rich man of him, they were sufficient to enable him to live decently, and during the year he greatly increased his acquaintance and his influence in the county. The one followed the other naturally; every acquaintance he made became his friend, and even before the end of his unsuccessful canvass in 1832 it had become evident to the observant politicians of the district that he was a man whom it would not do to leave out of their calculations. There seemed to be no limit to his popularity nor to his aptitudes, in the opinion of his admirers. He was continually called on to serve in the most incongruous capacities. Old residents say he was the best judge at a horse-race the county afforded; he was occasionally second in a duel of fisticuffs, though he usually contrived to reconcile the adversaries on the turf before any damage was done; he was the arbiter on all controverted points of literature, science, or woodcraft among the disputatious denizens of Clary's Grove, and his decisions were never appealed from. His native tact and humor were invaluable in his work as a peacemaker, and his enormous physical strength, which he always used with a magnanimity rare among giants, placed his off-hand decrees beyond the reach of contemptuous question. He composed differences among friends and equals with good-natured raillery, but he was as rough as need be when his wrath was roused by meanness and cruelty. We hardly know whether to credit some of the stories, apparently well-attested by living witnesses, of his prodigious muscular powers. He is said to have lifted, at Rutledge's mill, a box of stones weighing over half a ton! It is also related that he could raise a barrel of whisky from the ground and drink from the bung—but the narrator adds that he never swallowed the whisky. Whether these traditions are strictly true or not, they are evidently founded on the current reputation he enjoyed among his fellows for extraordinary strength, and this was an important element in his influence. He was known to be capable of handling almost any man he met, yet he never sought a quarrel. He was everybody's friend and yet used no liquor or tobacco. He was poor and had scarcely ever been at school, yet he was the best-informed young man in the village. He had grown up on the frontier, the utmost fringe of civilization, yet he was gentle and clean of speech, innocent of blasphemy or scandal. His good qualities might have excited resentment if displayed by a well-dressed stranger from an Eastern State, but the most uncouth ruffians of New Salem took a sort of proprietary interest and pride in the decency and the cleverness and the learning of their friend and comrade, Abe Lincoln.
It was regarded, therefore, almost as a matter of course that Lincoln should be a candidate for the Legislature at the next election, which took place in August, 1834. He was sure of the united support of the Whigs, and so many of the Democrats also wanted to vote for him that some of the leading members of that party came to him and proposed they should give him an organized support. He was too loyal a partisan to accept their overtures without taking counsel from the Whig candidates. He laid the matter before Major Stuart, who at once advised him to make the canvass. It was a generous and chivalrous action, for by thus encouraging the candidacy of Lincoln he was endangering his own election. But his success two years before, in the face of a vindictive opposition led by the strongest Jackson men in the district, had made him somewhat confident, and he perhaps thought he was risking little by giving a helping hand to his comrade in the Spy Battalion. Before the election Lincoln's popularity developed itself in rather a portentous manner, and it required some exertion to save the seat of his generous friend. At the close of the poll, the four successful candidates held the following relative positions: Lincoln, 1376; Dawson, 1370; Carpenter, 1170; and Stuart, at that time probably the most prominent young man in the district, and the one marked out by the public voice for an early election to Congress, 1164.
[Relocated Footnote (1): The following is an extract from the court record: "March 6, 1833. Ordered that William F. Berry, in the name of Berry and Lincoln, have license to keep a tavern in New Salem, to continue twelve months from this date, and that they pay one dollar in addition to six dollars heretofore prepaid as per Treasurer's receipt, and that they be allowed the following rates, viz.: French brandy, per pint, 25; Peach, 183/4; Apple, 12; Holland Gin, 183/4; Domestic, 121/2; Wine, 25; Rum, 183/4; Whisky, 121/2; Breakfast, dinner, or supper, 25; Lodging for night, 121/2; Horse for night, 25; Single feed, 121/2; Breakfast, dinner, or supper, for stage passengers, 371/2. Who gave bond as required by law."]
[Relocated Footnote (2): There has been some discussion as to whether Lincoln served as deputy under Calhoun or Neale. The truth is that he served under both of them. Calhoun was surveyor in 1833, when Lincoln first learned the business. Neale was elected in 1835, and immediately appointed Lincoln and Calhoun as his deputies. The "Sangamo Journal" of Sept, 12, 1835, contains the following official advertisement:
"SURVEYOR'S NOTICE.—I have appointed John B. Watson, Abram Lincoln, and John Calhoun deputy surveyors for Sangamon County. In my absence from town, any persons wishing their land surveyed will do well to call at the Recorder's office and enter his or their names in a book left for that purpose, stating township and range in which they respectively live, and their business shall be promptly attended to.
"T. M. NEALE."
An article by Colonel G. A. Pierce, printed April 21, 1881, in the Chicago "Inter-Ocean," describes an interview held in that month with W.G. Green, of Menard County, in which this matter is referred to. But Mr. Green relies more on the document in his possession than on his recollection of what took place in 1833. "'Where did Lincoln learn his surveying?' I asked. 'Took it up himself,' replied Mr. Green, 'as he did a hundred things, and mastered it too. When he acted as surveyor here he was deputy of T. M. Neale, and not of Calhoun, as has often been said. There was a dispute about this, and many sketches of his life gave Calhoun (Candle-box Calhoun, as he was afterwards known during the Kansas troubles and election frauds) as the surveyor, but it was Neale.' Mr. Green turned to his desk and drew out an old certificate, in the handwriting of Lincoln, giving the boundaries of certain lands, and signed, 'T. M. Neale, Surveyor, by A. Lincoln, Deputy,' thus settling the question. Mr. Green was a Democrat, and has leaned towards that party all his life, but what he thought and thinks of Lincoln can be seen by an endorsement on the back of the certificate named, which is as follows:"
(Preserve this, as it is the noblest of God's creation—A. Lincoln, the 2d preserver of his country. May 3, 1865.—Penned by W. G. Green, who taught Lincoln the English grammar in 1831.)]
[Relocated Footnote (3): As this is probably the earliest public document extant written and signed by Lincoln, we give it in full:
"March 3, 1834. Reuben Harrison presented the following petition: We, the undersigned, respectfully request your honorable body to appoint viewers to view and locate a road from Musick's ferry on Salt Creek, via New Salem, to the county line in the direction of Jacksonville.
"And Abram Lincoln deposited with the clerk $10, as the law directs. Ordered, that Michael Killion, Hugh Armstrong, and Abram Lincoln be appointed to view said road, and said Lincoln to act as surveyor.
"To the County Commissioners' Court for the county of Sangamon, at its June term, 1834. We, the undersigned, being appointed to view and locate a "Whole length of road, 26 road, beginning at Musick's ferry on Salt Creek, via New Salem, to the county line in the direction to Jacksonville, respectfully report that we have performed the duties of said view and location, as required by law, and that we have made the location on good ground, and believe the establishment of the same to be necessary and proper.
"The inclosed map gives the courses and distances as required by law.
Michael Killion, Hugh Armstrong, A. Lincoln."
(Indorsement in pencil, also in Lincoln's handwriting:)
"A. Lincoln, 5 days at $3.00, $15.00. John A. Kelsoe, chain-bearer, for
5 days at 75 cents, $3.75. Robert Lloyd, at 75 cents, $3.75. Hugh
Armstrong, for services as axeman, 5 days at 75 cents, $3.75. A.
Lincoln, for making plot and report, $2.50."
(On Map.) "Whole length of road, 26 miles and 70 chains. Scale, 2 inches to the mile."]
CHAPTER VII
LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE
The election of Mr. Lincoln to the Legislature may be said to have closed the pioneer portion of his life. He was done with the wild carelessness of the woods, with the jolly ruffianism of Clary's Grove, with the petty chaffering of grocery stores, with odd jobs for daily bread, with all the uncouth squalor of the frontier poverty. It was not that his pecuniary circumstances were materially improved. He was still, and for years continued to be, a very poor man, harassed by debts which he was always working to pay, and sometimes in distress for the means of decent subsistence. But from this time forward his associations were with a better class of men than he had ever known before, and a new feeling of self-respect must naturally have grown up in his mind from his constant intercourse with them—a feeling which extended to the minor morals of civilized life. A sophisticated reader may smile at the mention of anything like social ethics in Vandalia in 1834; but, compared with Gentryville and New Salem, the society which assembled in the winter at that little capital was polished and elegant. The State then contained nearly 250,000 inhabitants, and the members of the Legislature, elected purely on personal grounds, nominated by themselves or their neighbors without the intervention of party machinery, were necessarily the leading men, in one way or another, in their several districts. Among the colleagues of Lincoln at Vandalia were young men with destinies only less brilliant than his own. They were to become governors, senators, and judges; they were to organize the Whig party of Illinois, and afterwards the Republican; they were to lead brigades and divisions in two great wars. Among the first persons he met there—not in the Legislature proper, but in the lobby, where he was trying to appropriate an office then filled by Colonel John J. Hardin—was his future antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas. Neither seemed to have any presentiment of the future greatness of the other. Douglas thought little of the raw youth from the Sangamon timber, and Lincoln said the dwarfish Vermonter was "the least man he had ever seen." To all appearance, Vandalia was full of better men than either of them—clever lawyers, men of wit and standing, some of them the sons of provident early settlers, but more who had come from older States to seek their fortunes in these fresh fields.
During his first session Lincoln occupied no especially conspicuous position. He held his own respectably among the best. One of his colleagues tells us he was not distinguished by any external eccentricity; that he wore, according to the custom of the time, a decent suit of blue jeans; that he was known simply as a rather quiet young man, good-natured and sensible. Before the session ended he had made the acquaintance of most of the members, and had evidently come to be looked upon as possessing more than ordinary capacity. His unusual common-sense began to be recognized. His name does not often appear in the records of the year. He introduced a resolution in favor of securing to the State a part of the proceeds of the sales of public lands within its limits; he took part in the organization of the ephemeral "White" party, which was designed to unite all the anti- Jackson elements under the leadership of Hugh L. White, of Tennessee; he voted with the minority in favor of Young against Robinson for senator, and with the majority that passed the Bank and Canal bills, which were received with great enthusiasm throughout Illinois, and which were only the precursors of those gigantic and ill-advised schemes that came to maturity two years later, and inflicted incalculable injury upon the State.
Lincoln returned to New Salem, after this winter's experience of men and things at the little capital, much firmer on his feet than ever before. He had had the opportunity of measuring himself with the leading men of the community, and had found no difficulty whatever in keeping pace with them. He continued his studies of the law and surveying together, and became quite indispensable in the latter capacity—so much so that General Neale, announcing in September, 1835, the names of the deputy surveyors of Sangarnon County, placed the name of Lincoln before that of his old master in the science, John Calhoun. He returned to the Legislature in the winter of 1835-6, and one of the first important incidents of the session was the election of a senator to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Elias Kent Kane. There was no lack of candidates. A journal of the time says: "This intelligence reached Vandalia on the evening of the 26th of December, and in the morning nine candidates appeared in that place, and it was anticipated that a number more would soon be in, among them 'the lion of the North,' who, it is thought, will claim the office by preemption." [Footnote: "Sangamo Journal," January 2.] It is not known who was the roaring celebrity here referred to, but the successful candidate was General William L. D. Ewing, who was elected by a majority of one vote. Lincoln and the other Whigs voted for him, not because he was a "White" man, as they frankly stated, but because "he had been proscribed by the Van Buren party." Mr. Semple, the candidate for the regular Democratic caucus, was beaten simply on account of his political orthodoxy.
A minority is always strongly in favor of independent action and bitterly opposed to caucuses, and therefore we need not be surprised at finding Mr. Lincoln, a few days later in the session, joining in hearty denunciation of the convention system, which had already become popular in the East, and which General Jackson was then urging upon his faithful followers. The missionaries of this new system in Illinois were Stephen A. Douglas, recently from Vermont, the shifty young lawyer from Morgan County, who had just succeeded in having himself made circuit attorney in place of Colonel Hardin, and a man who was then regarded in Vandalia as a far more important and dangerous person than Douglas, Ebenezer Peck, of Chicago. Peck was looked upon with distrust and suspicion for several reasons, all of which seemed valid to the rural legislators assembled there. He came from Canada, where he had been a member of the provincial parliament; it was therefore imagined that he was permeated with secret hostility to republican institutions; his garb, his furs, were of the fashion of Quebec; and he passed his time indoctrinating the Jackson men with the theory and practice of party organization, teachings which they eagerly absorbed, and which seemed sinister and ominous to the Whigs. He was showing them, in fact, the way in which elections were to be won; and though the Whigs denounced his system as subversive of individual freedom and private judgment, it was not long before they were also forced to adopt it, or be left alone with their virtue. The organization of political parties in Illinois really takes its rise from this time, and in great measure from the work of Mr. Peck with the Vandalia Legislature. There was no man more dreaded and disliked than he was by the stalwart young Whigs against whom he was organizing that solid and disciplined opposition. But a quarter of a century brings wonderful changes. Twenty-five years later Mr. Peck stood shoulder to shoulder with these very men who then reviled him as a Canadian emissary of tyranny and corruption,—with S. T. Logan, 0. H. Browning, and J. K. Dubois,—organizing a new party for victory under the name of Abraham Lincoln.
[Illustration: O. H. Browning.]
The Legislature adjourned on the 18th of January, having made a beginning, it is true, in the work of improving the State by statute, though its modest work, incorporating canal and bridge companies and providing for public roads, bore no relation to the ambitious essays of its successor. Among the bills passed at this session was an Apportionment act, by which Sangamon County became entitled to seven representatives and two senators, and early in the spring eight "White" statesmen of the county were ready for the field—the ninth, Mr. Herndon, holding over as State Senator. It seems singular to us of a later day that just eight prominent men, on a side, should have offered themselves for these places, without the intervention of any primary meetings. Such a thing, if we mistake not, was never known again in Illinois. The convention system was afterwards seen to be an absolute necessity to prevent the disorganization of parties through the restless vanity of obscure and insubordinate aspirants. But the eight who "took the stump" in Sangamon in the summer of 1836 were supported as loyally and as energetically as if they had been nominated with all the solemnity of modern days. They became famous in the history of the State, partly for their stature and partly for their influence in legislation. They were called, with Herndon, the "Long Nine;" their average height was over six feet, and their aggregate altitude was said to be fifty-five feet. Their names were Abraham Lincoln, John Dawson, Dan Stone, Ninian W. Edwards, William F. Elkin, R. L. Wilson, and Andrew McCormick, candidates for the House of Representatives, and Job Fletcher for the Senate, of Illinois.
Mr. Lincoln began his canvass with the following circular:
NEW SALEM/June 13, 1836.
To the Editor of the "Journal."
In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the signature "Many Voters" in which the candidates who are announced in the "Journal" are called upon to "show their hands." Agreed. Here's mine.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).
If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
While acting as their representative I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is, and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to the several States, to enable our State, in common with others, to dig canals and construct railroads without borrowing money and paying interest on it.
If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President. [Footnote: This phrase seems to have been adopted as a formula by the anti-Jackson party. The "cards" of several candidates contain it.]
Very respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
It would be hard to imagine a more audacious and unqualified declaration of principles and intentions. But it was the fashion of the hour to promise exact obedience to the will of the people, and the two practical questions touched by this circular were the only ones then much talked about. The question of suffrage for aliens was a living problem in the State, and Mr. Lincoln naturally took liberal ground on it; and he was also in favor of getting from the sale of public lands a portion of the money he was ready to vote for internal improvements. This was good Whig doctrine at that time, and the young politician did not fancy he could go wrong in following in such a matter the lead of his idol, Henry Clay.
He made an active canvass, and spoke frequently during the summer. He must have made some part of the campaign on foot, for we find in the county paper an advertisement of a horse which had strayed or been stolen from him while on a visit to Springfield. It was not an imposing animal, to judge from the description; it was "plainly marked with harness," and was "believed to have lost some of his shoes"; but it was a large horse, as suited a cavalier of such stature, and "trotted and paced" in a serviceable manner. In July a rather remarkable discussion took place at the county-seat, in which many of the leading men on both sides took part. Ninian Edwards, son of the late Governor, is said to have opened the debate with much effect. Mr. Early, who followed him, was so roused by his energetic attack that he felt his only resource was a flat contradiction, which in those days meant mischief. In the midst of great and increasing excitement Dan Stone and John Calhoun made speeches which did not tend to pour oil on the waters of contention, and then came Mr. Lincoln's turn. An article in the "Journal" states that he seemed embarrassed in his opening, for this was the most important contest in which he had ever been engaged. But he soon felt the easy mastery of his powers come back to him, and he finally made what was universally regarded as the strongest speech of the day. One of his colleagues says that on this occasion he used in his excitement for the first time that singularly effective clear tenor tone of voice which afterwards became so widely known in the political battles of the West. The canvass was an energetic one throughout, and excited more interest, in the district than even the presidential election, which occurred some months later. Mr. Lincoln was elected at the head of the poll by a majority greatly in excess of the average majority of his friends, which shows conclusively how his influence and popularity had increased. The Whigs in this election effected a revolution in the politics of the county. By force of their ability and standing they had before managed to divide the suffrages of the people, even while they were unquestionably in the minority; but this year they completely defeated their opponents and gained that control of the county which they never lost as long as the party endured.
If Mr. Lincoln had no other claims to be remembered than his services in the Legislature of 1836-7, there would be little to say in his favor. Its history is one of disaster to the State. Its legislation was almost wholly unwise and hurtful. The most we can say for Mr. Lincoln is that he obeyed the will of his constituents, as he promised to do, and labored with singular skill and ability to accomplish the objects desired by the people who gave him their votes. The especial work intrusted to him was the subdivision of the county, and the project for the removal of the capital of the State to Springfield. [Footnote: "Lincoln was at the head of the project to remove the seat of government to Springfield; it was entirely intrusted to him to manage. The members were all elected on one ticket, but they all looked to Lincoln as the head" STEPHEN T, LOGAN.] In both of these he was successful. In the account of errors and follies committed by the Legislature to the lasting injury of the State, he is entitled to no praise or blame beyond the rest. He shared in that sanguine epidemic of financial and industrial quackery which devastated the entire community, and voted with the best men of the country in favor of schemes which appeared then like a promise of an immediate millennium, and seem now like midsummer madness.
[Sidenote: Ford, p. 102.]
[Footnote: Reynolds, "Life and Times."]
He entered political life in one of those eras of delusive prosperity which so often precede great financial convulsions. The population of the State was increasing at the enormous rate of two hundred percent in ten years. It had extended northward along the lines of the wooded valleys of creeks and rivers in the center to Peoria; on the west by the banks of the Mississippi to Galena; on the east with wide intervals of wilderness to Chicago. The edge of the timber was everywhere pretty well occupied, though the immigrants from the forest States of Kentucky and Tennessee had as yet avoided the prairies. The rich soil and equable climate were now attracting an excellent class of settlers from the older States, and the long-neglected northern counties were receiving the attention they deserved. The war of Black Hawk had brought the country into notice; the utter defeat of his nation had given the guarantee of a permanent peace; the last lodges of the Pottawatomies had disappeared from the country in 1833. The money spent by the general Government during the war, and paid to the volunteers at its close, added to the common prosperity. There was a brisk trade in real estate, and there was even a beginning in Chicago of that passion for speculation in town lots which afterwards became a frenzy.
It was too much to expect of the Illinois Legislature that it should understand that the best thing it could do to forward this prosperous tendency of things was to do nothing; for this is a lesson which has not yet been learned by any legislature in the world. For several years they had been tinkering, at first modestly and tentatively, at a scheme of internal improvements which should not cost too much money. In 1835 they began to grant charters for railroads, which remained in embryo, as the stock was never taken. Surveys for other railroads were also proposed, to cross the State in different directions; and the project of uniting Lake Michigan with the Illinois River by a canal was of too evident utility to be overlooked. In fact, the route had been surveyed, and estimates of cost made, companies incorporated, and all preliminaries completed many years before, though nothing further had been done, as no funds had been offered from any source. But at the special session of 1835 a law was passed authorizing a loan of half a million dollars for this purpose; the loan was effected by Governor Duncan the following year, and in June, aboard of canal commissioners having been appointed, a beginning was actually made with pick and shovel.
[Sidenote: Ford, p. 181.]
A restless feeling of hazardous speculation seemed to be taking possession of the State. "It commenced," says Governor Ford, in his admirable chronicle, "at Chicago, and was the means of building up that place in a year or two from a village of a few houses to be a city of several thousand inhabitants. The story of the sudden fortunes made there excited at first wonder and amazement; next, a gambling spirit of adventure; and lastly, an all-absorbing desire for sudden and splendid wealth. Chicago had been for some time only one great town-market. The plots of towns for a hundred miles around were carried there to be disposed of at auction. The Eastern people had caught the mania. Every vessel coming west was loaded with them, their money and means, bound for Chicago, the great fairy-land of fortunes. But as enough did not come to satisfy the insatiable greediness of the Chicago sharpers and speculators, they frequently consigned their wares to Eastern markets. In fact, lands and town lots were the staple of the country, and were the only article of export." The contagion spread so rapidly, towns and cities were laid out so profusely, that it was a standing joke that before long there would be no land left in the State for farming purposes.
The future of the State for many years to come was thus discounted by the fervid imaginations of its inhabitants. "We have every requisite of a great empire," they said, "except enterprise and inhabitants," and they thought that a little enterprise would bring the inhabitants. Through the spring and summer of 1836 the talk of internal improvements grew more general and more clamorous. The candidates for office spoke about little else, and the only point of emulation among the parties was which should be the more reckless and grandiose in its promises. When the time arrived for the assembling of the Legislature, the members were not left to their own zeal and the recollection of their campaign pledges, but meetings and conventions were everywhere held to spur them up to the fulfillment of their mandate. The resolutions passed by the principal body of delegates who came together in December directed the Legislature to vote a system of internal improvements "commensurate with the wants of the people," a phrase which is never lacking in the mouth of the charlatan or the demagogue.